Dick ps. Here it is in more context, possibly with a few OCR errors:... The point which must be emphasized is that whatever we may do, extra-auditory factors do creep in and do affect the judgment of direction. Three facts regarding auditory localization may be briefly stated: (I) Sound localization is a binaural effect. A man, deaf in one ear, localizes sounds entirely by extra-auditory factors. If these factors are lacking he localizes the sound at his good ear. (2) The ear possesses no means by which the distance of a sound can be judged. Judgment of distance is an extra-auditory function. (3) Similarly the judgment of the altitude of a sound, and whether it is in front of, or behind, us is an extra-auditory function. With our two ears it is only possible to say that a given sound, say on the right, lies somewhere on the surface of a cone whose axis is on the line joining the ears. We all, however, have preferential positions: to some the sound may seem to be inside the head, to others it is outside; to some it is in front, to others it is behind. It may be argued that the use of the term" localization" is an improper use of the word when all that is intended is that we can judge angular direction on the surface of a cone. This is true. But the term is used, and provided we understand its significance no harm is done. I shall use the terms" localization" and" direction" in what follows as synonymous. It is an interesting fact that only one of some thirty observers who have observed for me ever located the sound, under experimental conditions, when the two ears were stimulated separately, in front. This one observer was blind and had been blind from infancy! It is probable that we could all be trained to localize the sound in front, or that merely to seat the observer at the centre of a semicircular scale and to ask him to locate on the scale the position of the sound would make him localize the sound externally to his head and in front of him.
At 7:19 PM -0400 4/17/11, Kevin Austin wrote:
Thanks to Richard Lyon:"(2) The ear possesses no means by which the distance of a sound can be judged. Judgment of distance is an extra-auditory function."p. 104 THE BASIS OF SOUND-LOCALIZATION By H. BANISTER, Psychological Laboratory, Cambridge 1931 THE PHYSICAL SOCIETY Report of a DISCUSSION ON AUDITION HELD ON JUNE 19, 1931 AT THE IMPERIAL COLLEGE OF SCIENCE Published by THE PHYSICAL SOCIETY 1 Lowther Gardens, Exhibition Road London, S.W.7 Kevin On 2011, Apr 16, at 9:24 PM, Junfeng Li wrote:Dear list,I am now wondering how to subjectively evaluate distance perception in virtual environments which might be synthesized using WFS or HOA (high-order ambisonics). In my experiments, the sounds were synthesized at different distances and presented to listeners for distance discrimination. However, the listener cannot easily perceive the difference in distance between these sounds.Anyone can share some ideas or experiences in distance perception experiments? or share some references on this issue?Thank you so much. Best regards, Junfeng